What's more fun than
looking up old patent and trademark information?
The answer is, just about anything. Going through
those moldy books page-by-page is about as much fun
as a stab-in-the-eye with a sharp stick. And
driving to the state capitol library is no holiday
either, never mind the ten dollar parking fee. And
try stuffing an eight-pound book into a
copier—fine if you have three arms. You could
hire a patent attorney to do a search for you but
who can afford it? How much do you think he'll
charge for a twenty hour search? Fortunately, all
this has changed with the United States Patent and
Trademark Office online site. That's
particularly good news for talking board
aficionados like us who have just been just dying
to see what was going on in the heads of early
talking board inventors. Not that we're any wiser
now.

The USPTO site is
particularly easy to navigate and search; obviously
someone other than a government employee designed
it. You may search in a variety of ways and you can
cross-reference until you're cross-eyed. The site
only carries patents back as far as the 1870's, but
who's complaining? We're grateful for what they
have, and so should you.

So now is your chance to
see the patents of E. Bond, W. Fuld, C. Kennard, F.
Black, and H. White. Who were F. Black, and H.
White? Well, we don't know, but they made some
great looking talking boards. If we hadn't done
some digging we would have missed them altogether.
Expect to see some really weird stuff: electric
planchettes, sound emitting talking boards, strange
pendulums, mechanical spirit boards, it's all
there.

To get you on your way (no
need to thank us, folks), we've listed a few dozen
talking board patents by number, date, type and
inventor at the bottom of this page. And we weren't
too particular, either. If it looked strange
enough, we put it down. What more could anyone ask?
If you see one that intrigues you, copy the patent
number to your clipboard, go to the USPTO site. Enter the number and before you can say
"William Fuld," there will be the patent in all its
glory. It just doesn't get any better than this.
Our list is by no means exhaustive so if you find
something really interesting, and we've missed it
somehow, give us an email and tell us about it. We
would really appreciate it. And tell Yogi, the
Hindu Mastermind that we sent you.